When NATO began its invasion of the Marjah farming region, the general consensus among analysts was that the offensive, the single largest operation since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan against a relatively anonymous little town in the middle of nowhere, was mostly a “PR” invasion to sell the continued to an increasingly skeptical Western public.

But it is increasingly clear that wasn’t the whole story. Officials are now making it very plain that the invasion of Marjah was a “test” of a new strategy, that will be put into practice on a much larger scale with the invasion of Kandahar.